Life without social media

2025-08-19

Reclaim your time

I’ve been free from social media now for a good part of a year and I don’t think I’ll ever be going back. Admittedly I do have LinkedIn mainly for work opportunities but apart from that I’m no longer “connecting” with others through digital platforms and I think others should too.

Since coming off social media I’ve felt far more present with my time, I no longer feel the need to post stuff which quite frankly was to get likes from people who were more like acquaintances than actual friends. One of my main issues with social media is the “algorithm” all these platforms use to keep you hooked, for example you go to look at a post your friend has written and next thing you know it has been 2 hours.

The thing which I think quite a lot of people don’t realise is that they are the commodity which these companies are using to sell to advertisers, which results in the more time you spend on the platform the more money they earn. This results in a worse experience for the users of these platforms, rather than the focus being on how to improve the platform for the users the incentive is to extract the most time out of you.

There are plenty more issues with social media but my main issue is that the disregard for your time. Obviously millions of people do find value in social media, but with the incentives of these companies do the benefits really outweigh the negatives? If there’s one thing to take away from this post, it’s this: how do you want to spend your time?

Thanks, Nathan.

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